Transitions

Letting go (what we don't do in education)
How familiar does this sound?

ORGANIZATIONAL RENEWAL - William Bridges
A whole book could be written on the way that repeated changes are today sapping the energy and confusing the purpose within corporations and public institutions. Many of the initiatives launched by leaders—initiatives that are intended to lead to organizational renewal—all too often simply add to the burden of change. The new strategic, structural, and or cultural plans are all meant to bring new life to the organization. But few of them do justice to the natural renewal sequence of letting go, embracing and exploring the time between realities, and then setting off on the chosen path to the future. 

and

TRANSITION AS 'THE WAY THROUGH'

Transition is not just a nice way to say change. It is the inner process through which people come to terms with a change, as they let go of the way things used to be and reorient themselves to the way that things are now. In an organization, managing transition means helping people to make that difficult process less painful and disruptive.
. ..In what sense, could it be time for you to let go of that particular way to use your talents? In what way are you outgrowing the identity that you've been trading on for these past years? And if you can't get appreciated any longer in your old work situation, is that loss in any sense a timely one?
Such questions give you a place to start, a path to follow. Every one of them suggests some learning, some discovery that may lie ahead. Each of them represents a gate in that change-wall that blocked your path.

This ties in with the idea that cognitive dissonance, which some traditional educators regard as an evil to be avoided, is in fact the signal that learning and growth are possible. It may be uncomfortable, but it is important. 'Cognitive dissonance' is a way of describing the state of transition between the old way of understanding and the new, the "neutral zone".

Presence

This is the same phenomenon that Otto Scharmer describes at the bottom of the U in his Theory-U. In the executive summary to his book Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges he says this about it:

On that journey, at the bottom of the U, lies an inner gate that requires us to drop everything that isn't essential. This process of letting-go (of our old ego and self) and letting-come...

That process of simultaneously letting-go and letting-come is another way of describing the experience of cognitive dissonance - what we experience (and do) in the neutral zone.